


weight of years

by cptsuke



Series: post old guard canon [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dissociation, Flashbacks, M/M, Post-Canon, booker ambivalent, but fairly minor, but not pro booker, just the aftermath of his actions, nicky pov, not anti booker, this aint about him, this starts angsty then devolves very quickly into a joe love fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27467512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: with an aching head and a splintered family, nicky thinks too much
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: post old guard canon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037640
Comments: 26
Kudos: 149





	weight of years

**Author's Note:**

> I once wrote that Joe lives in the Here & Now, while Nicky lives in every time at once because he Dwells™. So forgive the all-over-the-show-ish-ness of this, i went where my heart took me.

His head hurts. Nicky's healed, mostly, but upright and fully capable of firing the guns in his hand. His shattered skull has pieced itself back together, but the mess the bullet had made of his brain feels like it's still slowly - very slowly - connecting itself back together.

_big things take longer._

Joe stays very close as they head down, as they chase after Merrick, as they realize they've been tricked but that Nile has dealt with him in their stead. Joe throws his gun away in disgust when they reach the street, his free hands brushing against Nicky's arm as he steadies him, keeps close enough to catch him if the day and all their wounds finally catch up with him. Nicky's hand tighten on his pistols as he feels an impossibly large wave of affection for this man.

Nicky doesn't have the words for what resides in his chest, his mouth is a poor instrument for the immense, infinite thing he can taste clawing up his throat when he looks at Joe and Joe looks back.

Nicolò can listen to Joe for hours - days, decades, centuries, the rest of his never ending life - even when they'd been uneasy companions the sound of Yusuf, the words he'd choose, lyrical and beautiful, and far more patient than Nicolò had deserved at the time.

He knows he had been more beast than man by the time they'd stop trying to fell each other, sometimes - even now - he can still feel that shivering madness beneath his skin, driven by pain and horror and guilt.

He knows he wanted to do good, but his first and harshest lesson will always be that intent means very little if nothing is learnt from mistakes made.

So he carries the guilt, the sins of his first life with him still. The real sins, not the petty prejudices of man or the twisting of scriptures to suit whichever king sat atop the richest throne. The real ones, governed by morality, that didn't rely on the promise of God's love or fear of his wrath, governed by the obvious wrongs he's been party to.

He still struggles never fully knowing if the choices they make even now are the right ones. Every day a delicate struggle weighing the good, the bad, and what four people could realistically do.

Killing those that would hold children to be sold despite the circumstances that might have brought them to this place is a choice Nicky makes, weighing the lives of seventeen young girls and finding the cost on his soul something he would willingly pay.

Joe calls it noble, but Joe is still far too kind to Nicky, his heart overflowing with the sort of goodness that couldn't be taught – even though Nicolò has spent centuries trying to emulate it.

And he does okay.

It's not much to give the last of his food to a big pair of eyes, to gladly make jest of himself to hear the laugh of a child in a war torn land.

He'll take a bullet or a punch from a fool who doesn't know better, but can perhaps learn to be if they're only given the chance. He has been that fool, he has to believe that people can be better.

He tries to be like the saints that Yusuf spent the Renaissance painting his likeness as. But he does not lie to himself.

He knows not many could fault them for the carnage they leave behind in the Merrick building.

Pros and cons weighed.

The sanctity of life against the biopsy needle in his lungs. Against cuffs cinched cruelly tight. Against the knowledge that this could be all they know for their next century, a lifetime that stretched another nine hundred years, strapped down within sight but out of reach, cursed to take turns with pain and helplessness.

Weighed against the final almost silent gasp of air before Yusuf's heart monitor screamed and he was so very still.

He knows if anyone tries to stop them on the street, Nicolò will cut them down without hesitation.

There's nine million people in this city and Nicolò knows that if every single one of them tried to stop tried to stop him from leaving this place with Yusuf, he'd cut down them down one by one.

He imagines it, a line of souls farther than the eye could see, the rows of the bodies he'd leave if it meant Yusuf's safety. The immensity of the blood he'd spill.

He hasn't changed, he fears, Nicolò's traded one god for another, the only protection the world has against his terrible heart is Joe. His new god, sunshine cloaked in flesh, forgiveness and love made man, who never asks a thing from Nicolò, no matter how he might beg otherwise.

He doesn't know how to be the person Yusuf thinks he is. The acts he knows he's capable of wars with the man Nicolò wants to be, the man Yusuf believes him to be.

He tells Joe not to bother arguing with Booker, not because he's wrong - he's not - but because Sebastièn was a brawler, he took any attack and turned it to his advantage. Already the repentance from when he and Andy were first brought in has given way to angry and defensive words in the face of Yusuf's hurt.

He's lucky, Nicolò knows, he's been lucky from the moment Yusuf's _saif_ gutted him and he woke scared, alone, hurt but at least he'd had the knowledge that he shared his fate with another.

And later, after they'd finally stopped trying to solve the riddle of their immortality by killing each other over and over, in the long years before Andy and Quýhn, they had each other and all the pain they'd once inflicted had been replaced with sure hands and wordless sounds of comfort to welcome the other back to life. Reassurance that the other was there even before they came to be all that they are now

He has had the light of Yusuf's smile, the endless depths of his eyes, nine hundred years of learning the best way to make Yusuf's smile glow from within.

Nicolò's other half is such a generous soul, he could weep for the chance to give even a fraction of what Yusuf offers back.

Nicolò is selfish, he knows this. He has spent eons trying to fashion that flaw into something useful. To bend his selfishness to the whims of a kind forgiving man.

A small child's smile may buoy his beloved's heart for a week, while cold and helpless to the rot that stripped the skin from their feet with shells screaming over their heads in the trenches of a war that stretched across the globe at such a scale it beggared belief. If the price of Joe's eyes crinkling at the corners was the last of Nicolò's bread, and a single piece of chocolate wrapped in cloth and wedged carefully in the corner of his pocket, he'd pay it easily and happily.

There was a freedom in being loved. In the knowledge and belief of being loved. But that hasn't kept them safe from hurt and harm, did Booker truly believe them so blessed as to not have suffered?

Should Nicky have shared his sorrow? His shame? Did his desire not to upset Sebastièn with horrors of the past just drive an invisible wedge between them?

Did he hold his tongue to protect Booker, or was he silent on the darkest parts of his life to save his own feelings of shame?

Joe says no one has claim to the scars on Nicolò's soul, that he owes no one his pain. But what if, by his own childish desire to spare himself an old hurt, to paint himself in a more flattering light, he lead them to where they are now?

Nicky wonders if he had shared his own story of familial rejection, would that have tempered Booker's bitterness? Should he have told Booker of his sister? So long gone by the time Sebastien had come along, would he have cared, would it have just been a poor and pale comparison to someone so newly bereaved?  
Catarina's face had been lined with age, grey with fear, and she'd looked at Nicolò like a demon come to take all she loved. They'd left it too long, to return to the place Nicolò had been born, her long grieved, buried in a foreign land, baby faced brother appearing as he had, thirty years too late, much, much too young. He'd turned to leave, heartsick from being the cause of that anguished look on her face and she'd broken a bottle over his head, screamed and cried and cursed him.

Yusuf had never said anything about the shards of glass he'd pulled from Nicolò's scalp.

Just as Nicolò had said nothing of the sharp pained look Yusuf had carried upon leaving his own family. They hadn't exactly shunned Yusuf, but something fundamentally had changed to the point that Yusuf had confided in feeling like a ghost, no longer wanted, no longer connected, amongst ones that used to know him best. Maybe it was the burden of immortality, both Quýhn and Andromache had warned them, just as they had in turn warned Sebastién.

(maybe their burden was also to ignore well meant warnings and feel certain pains for themselves)

Nicky wonders if perhaps he should have delved deeper into the memory when trying to talk to Booker, tried to explain the fear that turned to anger, to bitterness, how the unbelievable could be considered a betrayal regardless of intent (or lack there of)

But time had worn down the barb of his beloved sister's attack, experience had given him insight and eventually taught him that a bloody head wound could have been so much worse. Seven hundred years later he hadn't wanted to really recall that devastated feeling.

He thinks about this as he follows his family down and out of the building, as he covers them, as he watches Booker for any sign or deviation. He feels suddenly every moment of his nine hunded years alive, old and so very tired.

Nicky doesn't really think about much as he gets in the car, both excruciatingly aware of his movements, feeling like exaggerated caricatures of normal human movements, but somehow also feeling separated, completely cut off from his body. The act of climbing across the seats, extremely conscious of his knees jack knifed up to his face, as Nile and Booker squeeze in on either side of him.

The euphoria of the 'win' burning off fast as the reality of the situation they're now in sinks deep into his bones.

His head hurts.

He's careful, doesn't think about anything but keeping himself from flinching away from the gentle, accidental of Booker's leg brushing against his, of keeping his head from dropping back against the seat. It's mostly dry, he thinks, from the stiffness of his hair, but the futile polite side of him still doesn't want to stain the car seat's fabric with the bits that are still soggy with congealed blood.

The edge of Joe's jaw flexes, the muscle twitching, his body held with an unnatural stillness and Nicolò aches to put a palm to Joe's spine, to place his hand on those tight muscles and feel them relax into the curve of his palm. But he can't.

_what can you know of our pain?_

Andy turns a corner, her face is a fierce look of concentration, she's hurting, but she's not in a place where she'd be willing to let someone - anyone - take the reins from her. Nicolò's heart aches in his throat as Booker's leg pushes into his with the turn of the car.

Andy drives like she has a destination in mind. He can't remember where they could be going. He can feel pieces of his mind shifting, whether real or imagined, little movements that send small bursts of pain and disjointed memories through his skull.

_big things take longer_

He consciously doesn't shift away from the press of Booker's knee, pretends he can't feel it, pretends he doesn't want to pull away. There isn't enough room anyway.

Joe's eyes flicker to the rear view mirror, not quite meeting Nicky's, not quite not either. The muscle in his jaw twitches again as he looks away.

_you and Joe always had each other_

Nicolò blinks. Behind his eyes his head hurts.

On the other side of him Nile clenches her fist and releases it steady and slowly and over and over.

He thinks about taking it, about holding it and feeling all the little bones falling back into their place. Helping what's left gently back into position.

But he's not sure he's allowed the imposition. She's already been through so much in such a small amount of time. She's due what little agency she has left.

Later.

Maybe.

When they know each other better he can show her how to ease pain with gentle touch. She seems the type of person that finds the same worthwhile purpose in helping others that Nicolò feels. Even if it's only in small ways.

Nicky presses his fingertips into the material of his jeans. Coarse material that's seen better days after all the wear they've seen lately.

He blinks again. Thinks of Joe's gentle hands guiding Nicky's bones back into place.

(A blacksmith's hammer and villagers' misplaced rage. It was okay in the end, they'd gotten away in the end and not one of them had died. But hiding in the dark, feeling his bones crunch and shift their way back to whole, he thinks without Joe he'd have screamed enough to bring their attackers to their place of safety)

He misses Joe's hands. It's been so long since he's felt them in anything but fear and pain and desperation. It feels like an age since he'd wiped the worst of the Nicky's blood away from his neck, thick and so very red smeared across his palm in a futile attempt to make Nicky look less like a walking corpse or a Halloween prop.

He presses his fingers deeper into his thighs. The texture of the denim and the slow deep ache wars with the small bright bursts of pain zipping around his skull like fireworks.

_big things take longer_

Somewhere two hundred years ago he had been much closer, all of them so close there'd been little way to tell where one began and one ended, all in a futile attempt at staving off the Russian winter winds. Still, they hadn't died, though they'd been aching and frozen down to their bones more nights than not. Somewhere in those long freezing months of travel back to France Sebastièn had become their brother and now two hundred years later Nicolò finds himself digging harsh fingers into his own flesh to stop from pulling away, to stop from curling into a ball away from his brother.

And so he doesn't.

Instead he breathes softly out, instead he loosens his hands, instead he stops thinking about it, stops thinking about the first time Sebastièn had smiled with them as a family, or his laughter when he'd won a bet against Nicky, the chaotic way his hands moved when he and Joe watched football, the soft look in his eyes when Andy sniped jokes with them all.

(all the little memories zapping their way into existence in his head like sharp pinpricks)

So he stops thinking about everything, like he was still strapped on his back, his oldest friend _bleeding_ beside him, the love of his life sentenced to this never ending pain-filled incarceration, his brother and betrayer across the room remorseful but somehow still angrily defensive.

_what do you know of our_ _pain_

He could endure this because he had no other choice. He could endure this because to not would be betray his most precious promise to not leave Joe,

Like a bullet to the skull he remembers with the vivid lucidity of the sharpest memory, a time with Joe's nose against the back of his neck, his hands tightly twined around Nicolò's, fine tremors running through the both of them, still tacky with blood, too exhausted to do anything but cling to each other, equal parts miserable from past days of pain, and euphoric from the simple joy of having each other within the others reach.

 _Never, please, never leave me, please_.

He'd tightened his hands, squeezed til Joe's were as white as his own.

_Always. Always. Never. Never._

A promise to each other.

Joe's eyes catch his, the briefest of moments. Joe's eyes are so expressive, the deepest pools of emotion that Nicolò has ever seen in all his nine hundred years on Earth. He can find a reason to keep moving, he thinks, if he can just look into those eyes once more.

(and once more and once again, God, never take those from him)

The corner of them crinkles slightly, a miniscule quirk of an eyebrow, a silent question, a touchstone. Nicky wonders what Joe reads in his eyes.

They'd been traveling for a month the first time Nicolò had surprised Yusuf, had swung his sword past him, slicing deep into old allies and Yusuf had laughed, when the fight had finally ended, blood splattered liberally all over them but their tunics not scored with blade cuts for once, Nicky had been breathless at the way Joe's entire face had lit up from within and Yusuf had said with a smile on his face; _I can't read a thing in your cold eyes_.

Nicky wonders when he'd started being able to. He doesn't mean to be so inexpressive, he just finds sometimes he thinks so hard on the inside that he forgets about the outside of himself and the time to emote has passed. He tries to smile at Joe, though he doesn't feel his face move.

It maybe works, Joe's eyes soften in the mirror, but then they flicker across to Nicky's right and the line between his eyebrow creases like a sudden blow, a shock of pain. Joe breathes deep and looks away, out the window. And Nicky's hands are very still but he wishes he could reach out and touch.

Maybe not now when the hurt is as present as the blood still on their skin, but Joe will forgive Booker, most likely much sooner than he deserves. Nicolò knows this.

Yusuf's heart is too big to carry that burden, just like he forgave Nicolò entirely too quickly a milennia ago. Nicky's not so sure he can.

_you and Joe always had each other_

Nicky crawls inside himself, tries to keep tabs on Andy's deep pained breaths, on Nile's clenching fist, Booker's leg bumping against his own as the car movement forces him away from where he's curled against the door, but most of Nicky's attention he lends to watching Joe. Feeling his throat try to close up with hurt at the splashes of blood up his neck, caking up behind his ear, congealing in the curls of his hairline, at the way he's biting back angry words, biting back hurt, and Nicky thinks he's going to have trouble letting this go for a long long time.

Joe's not the sort to get angry and seeing him visibly struggling with himself makes Nicky's hand itch for his sword. Where is his sword now? Still in Goussainville? In a _g_ _endarm_ _erie_ lockup somewhere? Had Andy had time to pack up before they'd fled?

He has no idea what had happened between getting gassed and Andy and Booker being led into their experiment room. He doesn't want to know.

(he does, God he does. how did they get away? how long did Booker keep playing pretend?)

He doesn't want to know.

He's not mad.

He is.

_HE IS._

He is mad. But it's a splintered hurting feeling that he shies away from, so he shoves it down, smooths it all over with the job at hand. Just like he'd hushed Joe's righteous anger, his hurt words, because they'd needed to be ready, if there was a chance they could get out if this, they needed to be paying attention. And he hadn't been sure if Booker would help or hinder any attempts, they couldn't rely on the him, and Nicky can't help but think of listening to Booker's bitter replies, his angry retorts. If he puts any thought into it he's going to shutdown, he's going to cry an ocean to rival the one that Quýhn's lost to.

So he stops thinking about it. Puts it in a corner of his still healing mind and shuts the door, marks it with a bright red cross, so he'll know when the time comes to deal with it, that the Pestilence resides on the otherside and he remembers the severity of those long past days.

 _Lord have mercy upon us,_ Nicky thinks by rote.

He is a sword. And steel has no need of worrying about the nuances of how it will be used.

Instead he will trust in the hand that's held him for close to a thousand years, and he will be the blade that keeps him safe.

19 years ago Joe had held his hands tight in Delft where even longer ago they'd found each other after three days of searching amongst an entire city on fire, singed, ash in their lungs but gloriously alive. He'd held Nicolòs hands tight and asked him to marry him.

He'd hesitated with his answer, and he remembered the flash of hurt that had stabbed Nicolò as surely as it had Yusuf, before he'd smiled like molten gold, like Nicolò hadn't unintentionally ripped a shred from his heart, because Nicolòs words were hard to find, they swirled around his head like a dust storm, any attempt to corral them became sand slipping between his fingers.

But he'd stumbled an explanation, choking on _death do us part_ , because death would not part them, he'd said to the frayed line on Joe's collar, he'd died so many times and he'll die again and again and not one of them would severe him from Joe's heart, not one of them would take Joe from his.

He'd stumbled through an explanation, picking his words carefully trying to find a way to say the words he meant.

Joe had understood him anyway, his golden smile turning to liquid sunlight.

(they had married, later, omitting the line, and swearing their lives to the other; feeling as if the 900 years before had been a long line of constant, year after year, vows, a renewing of devotion towards each other that culminated in a beautiful Dutch town that was built long ago but rebuilt anew, and Nicolò had added _husband_ to the long list of beloved words that circled his heart when he thought of Joe.

  
  


Nicky breathes a deep breath, the air of the car feels overheated and stifled. Too many bodies, packed in too tightly.

It had been cold, in the lab, a sterilized artificial coldness that had seeped into Nicky's bones. He'd felt like a carcass hung up to chill, shirtless and strapped down, each of the straps feeling like a cold blade against his skin.

Nicky suddenly and horribly longs for the sharp cold desert mornings of a millenia ago, for the times when it was just him and Yusuf, when his breath came out a heavy mist.

A burst of pain in his temple, a memory.

 _I still breathe. I'm still alive,_ _h_ e thinks, _t_ _here's still breath in my lungs_.

The crystal cold desert air was sharp with each intake but he'd breathed deep, let it out slow, let the mist curl around his face, obscuring his sight till it rendered the stark expanse in front of him hazy and soft.

Yusuf had made his way back to their camp, a waterbag slung over his shoulder, the sun's first rays lighting his dark curls from behind like the finest gold filigree, and Nicolò's breath had caught. His face in shadows and still his eyes seemed lit from within, still his smile blinded more than god' s brightest light behind him. Nicolò had felt helpless to do anything but offer his own smile back, feeling that there'd be little he wouldn't give but all he had is his sword, grit caked deep in the lines of his skin and the crooked lift of his lips.

If he could, he'd be a shield for this man, Nicolò remembers thinking, whimsical, foolish, trying to force the blocky straight edges of his thoughts into the flowing poetry Yusuf spoke without thought. But he's too sharp to be a real shield, there's too much inside him that snaps and snarls, more of a battering ram, a first line of defense twisted into an offensive strike.

His body is all he has, though some days it feels more flawed than good.

It'd taken a long time before he'd been able to study the crusades with anything but self flagellation in mind. Nicky had never spoke much of his days before Joe, but he never found himself having to explain his less than glorious origin story, Yusuf had always known everything he couldn't say, a true student of man, he could read Nicky's face and heart even when his words got caught in his throat.

Joe's soul was pure love, his heart and tongue poetry incarnate, but Yusuf's mind was all scholar. Nicolò rarely had to explain much of the thoughts that crossed his mind, Joe always seemed to be able to skip to the same wavelength as if the two of them were truly one.

He prays and he's prayed that in all these years beside Yusuf he's somehow managed to learn that talent purely by proximity.

Once, twice, more than three times, they'd found themselves torn apart together, bodies unrecognizable parts, strewn together always together, (cannons, land mines, IEDs and, on one horribly unforgettable occasion, drawn and quartered and left to the crows, a pile of offal) Nicky knows it means nothing, yet his body feels so twined with Joe's, sometimes he feels as if he's been rebuilt with small pieces of Yusuf, as if somehow he's managed to absorb some tiny part of the magic that makes Joe Joe. It's foolish and impossible but all the same Nicky holds the idea close to his chest, a stupid sweet thought to combat the horror of those memories.

  
  


He so busy concentrating he doesn't notice the car stopping, doesn't really notice anything til someone's fingers are tugging lightly on his sleeve and Joe's gone from the front seat. Nicky blinks, Andy's not in the drivers seat.

They're not moving.

He looks to his side, Joe's helping Nile out of her sea. His eyes meet Nicky's, softening impossibly more, Nicky loves him so much it physically hurts.

It's misting a light rain, Joe's hair has become a halo and Nicky can't help but blaspheme, he knows in his soul that Joe with his kind eyes and big heart should be the inspiration for every likeness of Jesus.

Nicky's eyes drop to that terrible bullet tear in Joe's shirt, at the center of his chest. The blood staining bright around it. The slightest flash of healthy unblemished skin beneath.

He remembers Joe on the floor, face slack with death while he'd choked on gas, mad with the need to get to him, but barely able to move for the wracking coughs and his body seizing from the gas' poison in his lungs.

That too had physically hurt.

His sleeve tugs again. He follows those fingers on his shirt up to Booker's worried face. He blinks.

Thinks Booker might say something.

Nile and Joe are gone from his side. He nods absentmindedly to whatever Booker is saying. Pulls away from those fingers, that grip. Slides out of the car, away from Sebastièn.

He purposefully pretends to not see the shuttered look of pain on Booker's face as he walks towards the safe house, away from Booker. If he looks. If he stops and sees his brother in pain, his stupid weak heart will try and pretend nothing has happened, that nothing needs to change.

He'd throw himself on grenades for the rest of eternity if it would make Sebastièn feel a mote better. But he would never - _could never_ \- sacrifice Joe.

He can't live with the idea of Nile, so very young, so new to their way of life, trapped and hurting. Or Andy, who has suffered so much for so long, spending her last days as imprisoned as Quýhn has been all these years. He doesn't know how to reconcile any of this.

He tries to do what is right, but where was the right in any of this?

Was there a way to keep his family safe and unharmed when one of them actively worked to see them unsafe and very much harmed?

He makes it inside, dripping with England's sodden rain, standing in a room he thinks he's shared with Joe maybe half a century again - maybe more, maybe less - it's familiar in the way a dream can be. Not sharp or vivid, but with a strange soft sort of recognition.

He should move, should look to getting food on the table.

He blinks.

There's a few old tins of spaghetti in the cupboard he discovers as he searches them while letting the tap water run clear, old enough to have dust on them but not so old that his guess of fifty years since they were last here must be out by quite a few decades.

It's not going to be a particularly gourmet meal but there's enough that no one will go hungry and the carbs are something that they all need after today. They've all died so much.

(god help them, they died so much)

He rinses out an old battered pot and sets it all together to cook on the stove. Stirring becomes almost meditative, watching the sauce slowly start bubbling as it heats, mind tired and empty as he repeats the motions over and over.

And over and over.

Tomatoes are such an odd little fruit.

He still remembers sailing into lands of what would eventually unite under the name Italia, having suffered the fall of Damascus, fighting to an uneasy stalemate between Ottoman and Safavid, feeling like they hadn't saved anyone or anything, seeing tomato bushes growing seemingly everywhere where once there'd been none. All that Renaissance business and it had still taken them another hundred years to work out how to eat them.

It tires him. Thinking of how a time felt compared to how it was remembered. A century remembered for its art even as city states and empires toppled and fell to ruin. A country now defined by a fruit originating in lands almost six thousands miles across the sea.

He blinks. Joe's beside him, clicking the heater off, moving gently in Nicky's space like he always is

(as he always belongs)

(just like Nicky's always in his)

A stack of bowls in one hand, Joe's thumb fits perfectly in the divot of Nicky's hip and he gently directs Nicky away from the stove, making room for himself.

“The car?” He asks. A question. Not a question. Joe nods anyway as his thumb circles in sync. “Dumped,” Joe answers sounding exhausted as he looks and Nicky wants to wrap him in blankets, in his arms, and hide him away from the cruelty of the world.

Nile appears in the kitchen door a _can I help?_ immediately on her lips.

Nicky looks again at Joe, loves the way his eyes go soft and kind for Nile, and ladles some spaghetti into the bowl on Joe's hand.

“No, it is done, please eat.” He says as Joe directs her to an empty chair

(they're all empty, he thinks, heart aching to see them filled, heart hardening at the thought of eating beside Booker right now)

Andy leans in the doorway, looking tired but freshly cleaned up, Nile must have, _oh,_ he should have thought about that, Nicky thinks, instead of standing stupid in his bedroom for however long it was.

He bites back an apology, Andromache never had much time for words, instead gestures to the food with raised eyebrows. As if she has a choice, he thinks as he overfills the bowl Joe holds for him.

How much food do normal people need? He worries, he'll have to talk with Nile, it's not that he doesn't know, but he can't be wrong, not in this. Andromache will not die before her time, and certainly not to poor nutrition. He bites his lip. They need better food, he should have gone out for groceries.

He serves a bowl for himself and Joe.

There's one more bowl.

The doorway remains empty.

Booker will be in his room no doubt.

(what if he's not, what if he has a plan b, does he still want to die? Does he still feel any regret for what happened? Nicky doesn't know, he hopes this tentative peace with Sebastièn means he is at least a little remorseful.)

He considers not serving the last bowl, forcing Booker out, but no, Nicky knows Sebastièn simply won't come out if he does that. And he died a lot too today. Foolish, _foolish_ man.

He ladles the last bowl full. Shares a long look with Joe, he looks like he wants to smile but his lips gets crooked and fragile and Nicky imagines throwing Booker's bowl against the wall.

Andy's suddenly in his space, her hand cups around the back of his neck, squeezes gently where his hair curls up from the damp. Her hand comes back sticky with watered down old blood and she looks at it for a long moment before shaking her head, an exasperated half smile on her face and a _Christ Nicky,_ _h_ _ave a shower,_ she says as she wipes her hand off on his already dirty t-shirt and Nicky can't help but smile back.

(he's vaguely aware that they're probably all deeply gross people, but when you've been covered in each others innards more than once (maybe more times than he can recount) they've all become uncomfortably comfortable with dealing with the uglier parts of being human.)

“Food first, then washing.” He snipes back, doesn't say _if_ _only so he doesn't collapse in the shower stall_.

Andy takes Booker's bowl from Nicky's hands with a heavy breath.

“I'll take it,” she says and her face suddenly lookong like Joe's. Creased with grief; angry and hurt and sorry and so very very tired.

She's still so much stronger than Nicky.

He nods, letting her take the bowls and herself out of the room to wherever Booker has holed up. God he hopes they're right to trust him to hold the peace for tonight.

Andromache can look after herself, he tells himself firmly, it's going to be hard enough, after this, not pushing her to the point where she murders them all in frustration, let alone starting the overprotectiveness right now.

“Sorry it is not much,” he says as Nile shovels spoonful after spoonful into her mouth in the fashion of most of the soldiers Nicky's ever met.

“It's good.”

“He's just sad he couldn't wow you with something fancy,” Joe jokes, a conspiratorial wink for Nile.

He jokes, but he's right, Nicolò would kill for some down time, a good kitchen and fresh groceries. Nile shouldn't think everyday is going to be abandoned buildings and eating like they're going to be shot down at any moment.

She needs to know that their long lives can be slow, can be filled with beautiful moments.

Nicky wants her to know that Joe can make a crying baby stop just by holding it, thats there's a special place in Nicolò's memories for every time he's seen Yusuf cradling a child in his arms, looking so infinitely at peace that the sight of him makes Nicky feel every beat of his heart. That Andromache is more than likely to start crying around horses, that there's something beautiful in the way ageless memories make Andy's hands and eyes soften.

She doesn't need to be told that sometimes the sound of a chain dragging will make Nicky throw up, or that there will be years of heartache and loneliness. Because Nile's young, but she's not stupid, she's _smart_ , Nile doesn't need to be reminded of the downfalls, but the positives? Nicky thinks it wouldn't hurt for her to have some joy, some things to look forward to.

He looks forward to learning about all the things that make her happy, and then doing his best to bring them into her life.

Nile smiles, Joe has always had the talent of making people smile, of jesting with strangers and making them feel as they are in on the joke.

“How are you doing?”

“I'm fine. Its -” She pauses, her face twitching through a complicated set of emotions. “It's a lot, you know? It's _a lot_. I feel like I should be freaking out more."

“You don't have to be okay. But you don't have to be _not_ okay either.” Joe says, comforting hand reaching across to bump gently with Nile's.

Joe's sentence doesn't sound like it make sense to Nicky but Nile's bumping Joe's hand back, a small smile appearing like sun rays from behind clouds. Nicky finds himself smiling along with the two of them,

“I'm sorry you have had to go through this, but I am very glad we've gotten the chance to know you.”

Nile blinks at him for a moment her smile twisting wry, but her eyes crinkle with a fondness that Nicky wants to see blossom and grow. “Y'all are such weirdos, but, uh, me too. Me too”

“If you need something, please let us know.”

Nicky's saved from losing himself in a spiral of trying to offer everything in the house to Nile if it would please her by a gentle nudge from Joe.

“Eat up, my heart.”

He smiles and tries to loosen the vice grip that tension has on his jaw. Nile has such a lovely smile, for all the horrors shes been through these last couple of days, Nicky can already imagine future days filled with her and Joe's light.

“That works both ways, you know. Are you guys okay?”

Nicky takes a deep breath, a sudden feeling of being under a microscope. He looks intently down at his bowl of spaghetti, gives himself a moment to collect himself, lets himself looks at Joe, whose smile has turned inwards as he dwells on the last week, before answering with a short but sincere "We will be."

They finish eating in comfortable quiet. Nicky collects their bowls as Joe offers to show Nile the upstairs bathroom, and hopefully help find her something to change into. There's going to be some serious clothes shopping in their future, and Nicolò already dreads it.

  
  


The water's warm, a thing he still marvels over no matter how commonplace it was now. He turns it a little a hotter, feels his ruined t-shirt grow wetter and heavier with steam and he peels it off, the material uncomfortably stuck and awkward.

Nicky stands a little closer to the water's flow, breathes the steam in deep, then ducks his head under. The water runs pink rivulets down his face, like tears of watered down blood. He runs his hands through his hair, quick and perfunctory, unsticking clumps of skull debris and coagulated blood til its all a gory mess in the drain. Nicky closes his eyes, lets the water run over him, lets his knees buckle til he's sitting under the shower's spray, knees tucked up to press against the glass.

The stall is not as small as some of the showers he's been in, there's not quite enough room to sit completely comfortably, but he can rest his head against his knees, feel their knobbly angles press against his eye sockets as the water falls down on him.

It quiets the thoughts in his head, the warm water beating down on his shoulders, slicking his hair down on his forehead.

The bathroom door opens then quietly clicks shut. Nicky can't hear much more, but he imagines the shuffling footsteps on tile, the rustle of clothing being removed. He does hear the shower curtain move aside, the cold plastic brushes past him as Joe steps in. The fall of water breaks, Joe above him, a hand on his shoulder and Nicky looks up.

Breathless for a moment at the sight of him.

Nicky can't stop the smile on his face - doesn't try to - as Joe offers him a hand and pulls Nicky to standing.

“I love you.” He breathes, the words escaping because it's all he can ever think about when he looks at Joe. At his beautiful smile and the light soft look in his deep, dark eyes. The stretch of his skin across collarbones, the curve of his shoulders. The tremor in his hands as they smooth around his jaw to the back of Nicky's head. The gentleness in them as they massage shampoo into Nicky's hair and then rinses it, a hand cupped across his forehead to keep the suds from stinging his eyes.

The feel of his beard against Nicky's palms as he cups his jaw and returns the favor.

He presses a kiss along the shape of Joe's face, an apology for the mess his curls will be in the morning as he gently works at the blood that's built up along his hairline.

  
  


The house is quiet by the time they've hastily dried off and settle into their bed. Joe pulls at their bedding til it's to his liking as Nicky rechecks his pistol and slots it carefully beneath his pillow.

Shifting and settling into the position they've spent most of their nine hundred years sharing, Nicky feels Joe's breath even out and slow, steady in sleep as he tries to copy it til they sound like they're sharing lungs.

Sometimes, on long dark nights when the thoughts in his head are very loud and the dark is very quiet, he feels Yusuf's arms tighten around him in sleep, and he begs to not be left behind, begs to not be the one whose hands try to hold unhealing wounds together. Then he'll roll into that embrace, look at the face that is more familiar than his own, use gentle hands to smooth lines that any dreams might place on his brow. And he prays that he is the last one standing, that Joe never has to feel the pain of being alone, that he never has to continue on and be alone.

Nicky thinks on being the last one, being the one who has to carry on alone, no matter how much it would hurt, no matter the loneliness, the idea that the world could continue on without a single person remembering Joe, carrying the memory of his love, holding and sharing the pale embers of what was once a roaring inferno, Nicolò won't live in that world. Nicolò won't allow the Joe to slip from the world, if he has to be the last one standing, Yusuf's name will be on his lips til he finally follows him.

He prays that it really is destiny, that they'll go as they came into this life. Together.

This is what it means to be with someone for eternity, he thinks as Joe's hands fidget in his sleep, reaching and shifting til Nicky moves his own hands so they slot perfectly together. Joe's grip is firm even in sleep, his nose rubbing against the back of Nicky's neck as he presses himself impossibly closer.

Nicky brings their joined hands up to his chest, presses them against his beating heart, like holding a precious but small flame safe from the winds of the world. He ducks his head to press a kiss against the hands that have kept him together and whole for longer than anyone has the right to ask for.

In the morning there will be a reckoning, in the morning there will be consequences, his heart aches for what will come but it no longer feels like the renting of skin and gnashing of teeth. His grief is already settling into the pragmatic acceptance that has seen Nicolò through the worst of times.

He knows this is what Booker meant when he cursed them for not understanding his loneliness. But he also does not think Booker understands the real weight of years, of an imaginable thousand of them, of never ending losses, of collapsing with grief and getting back up after because if they didn't who would? Who could? If there are words to explain to make someone fully feel and understand all that they've experienced Nicolò does not have them.

In the morning things will change for all of them, but this, not just Joe's embrace, not just his presence, _Yusuf_ himself will remain Nicky's constant.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure had a plan for this story, but about half way Nicky & I just started meandering towards these two quotes;  
> “Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?”  
> “They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and the second, a bit later on, when somebody mentions your name for the last time.”


End file.
